Claim an early years financial incentive payment on behalf of your employee

Use this service to make a claim for a £1,000 recruitment bonus for an employee.

What you’ll need to start a claim

To apply on behalf of your employee, you must have:

submitted an expression of interest to the Department for Education (DfE) between July and September 2025
received confirmation you can apply on their behalf and a link to the online service

You’ll need to provide some information about your employee and your nursery.

Make sure you’ve collected written consent from your employee before you share their information. To do this, you’ll need to provide them with a:

privacy notice (opens in new tab) that explains what information will be collected, why it’s being collected and who it will be shared with
consent form (opens in new tab) to collect their written consent to share their full name, email address and start date with DfE

You do not need to send the consent form to DfE, however you should keep it for your own records.

We’ll also ask you some questions to confirm your employee meets the eligibility criteria. They should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete.

We’ll need your organisation’s PAYE reference number. Your payroll or human resources department can normally provide this.

If your employee leaves their role before they’ve been in it for 6 months, you’ll need to cancel their claim.

You can cancel a claim or get help with the application by contacting EY.Financial-Incentives@education.gov.uk.